Take someone who has run in
Take someone who has run in shoes their whole life (heel striking and all), stick them on a treadmill completely barefoot, with no other explanation other then "run" and they will automatically, without thinking about it at all, begin running with the same form that we use - their strides will shorten and they will land lightly on the balls of their forefoot. Why? Because we are fearfully and wonderfully made and our brain, nerves, and Feet are Amazing. Basic "good form" doesn't require thought If you are completely barefoot. If you 'learn to barefoot' in minimalist shoes, then you must, for the first little bit, train your body to run with good form. But after you have trained your body to do so, whether you ditch the _________(insert minimalist shoe name here) or not, - stop thinking! Just.... "run". Trust your body to do what it has been (now) 'trained' to do, and Allow your body to run how it was designed.
For a lot of us, that "stop thinking and just run!" is hard. I wrote a blog about it maybe a week or 2 ago because I was finding myself overthinking - here's the gist of my thoughts.... though I don't like to run with ipods or anything else, take a run with an iPod blaring your favorite music (again, I usually don't like this idea at all). You'll get wrapped up in the beat of the song so you can't analyze your cadence, you'll find yourself singing in your head (or outloud... you know who you are /sites/all/modules/smileys/packs/Roving/bigsmile.png ) so that you can't focus on your breath count, and you'll get lost in the fun of the songs that you'll forget to concentrate on your form. And guess what you'll find? You're running. Just running - in near perfect form for the simple reason that you are Not Trying to